Featuring standout sets from a mix of newcomers and modern alt favourites, the Cardiff festival makes for a perfect city festival.

Quickly approaching twenty years in the game, the good people behind Sŵn Festival know what they’re doing. Everything just works. For three days, some of the most interesting underground music on the planet takes over the Welsh capital. Well, about half a mile of it; you can walk between the festival’s two most distant venues in about fifteen minutes and the vast majority of the spots in use are within touching distance of each other. It could easily be overcrowded and uncomfortable but it remains buzzy and slick. You’d struggle to find a queue worth moaning about over the weekend despite an absolutely stacked line-up.

The festival runs from Thursday to Saturday, and whilst that unfortunately rules out the likes of Adult DVD & Brown Horse for us, there are enough heavily-accented conversations about those sets in the Clwb Ifor Bach smoking area over the weekend to demonstrate that it’s a format that works for the locals. Even with Thursday off the cards, there are about a dozen names marked on Clashfinder and so begins a fairly relentless two days of hopping from basement to basement in one of the best (and most underrated) cultural cities in the world.

Our festival begins with alt-pop experimentalists Silver Gore, who open the intimate downstairs space at Clwb with a set that you could easily see scaled up to a later set upstairs or beyond in the future. Forty-five minutes after checking into our hotel, we’re watching one of the breakout acts of the year tear through wonky synth-led pop songs in a dingy basement with a very reasonably-priced Clwb Tropica in hand. It’s my first time at Sŵn and before the first set is through, I absolutely get it. It’s then over to St John’s for Gruff Rhys, one of the important names in the history of Welsh music. Given that the Super Fury Animals reunion shows sold out almost instantly, the opportunity to see him in the relatively intimate and absolutely beautiful settings of the Grade I listed building isn’t missed by many. Rhys plays solo and exclusively performs his Welsh language material, including plenty of this year’s wonderful ‘Dim Probs’ and the odd SFA deep cut. The contrast of first two acts, an upstart in a basement and then an icon of Welsh counterculture in one of the most breathtaking buildings in the UK, feels like a perfect introduction to the depth that the festival has to offer.

Edinburgh’s No Windows recall the folk sensibilities and swirling emotional delivery of‘Masterpiece’ era Big Thief but the attention being paid in the room is testament to the fact that they are doing things on their own terms. The original itinerary advised us to catch a few songs before heading off to sample something else. The original itinerary was disregarded almost immediately. A really magical set and definitely the pick of the bands that I was less familiar with before the weekend. Man/Woman/Chainsaw’s maximalist compositions, quite the opposite of their aforementioned Fat Possum label mates, don’t quite capture the crowd’s attention in the same way. Stewart Lee has a bit in which he laments that a certain type of gig-goer will turn up at his shows after being told that “it’s the sort of thing you should go and see, really” and this feels very that. Clwb Ifor Bach’s main room is awash with 6 Music Dads who are clearly aware of the hype and don’t want to miss out but, a few beers in, aren’t able to give the band the attention they deserve. It’s a shame, because the parts of the show that overpowered the yapping were very good.

A quick dash over to Jacob’s followed for what was undoubtedly the standout set of the weekend. The first few rows of the basement are packed with pals of locals casual smart and for the best part of an hour it feels like they’re one of the biggest bands on the planet. There’s three casual smart songs available online (and they’re all ace, by the way) but those closest to the tiny stage sing along to every word of every unreleased cut.

“Who here is from Wales?”, asks vocalist Peter Martin, before drowning out the cheers of pretty much every person in the room with a rendition of ‘Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau’. ‘Cranes’ is another highlight, drawing on the melodic clarity and tempo-toying of Porridge Radio and early Black Country, New Road before spiralling into all-hands-on-deck freakout chaos. Their set could’ve happened twice over without getting boring. It was youthful, joyous and unpretentious. We had planned to see a bit of the two acts who closed out the night back at Clwb Ifor Bach but it felt more fitting to retire for the night with casual smart as our headliner.

It’s really hard to imagine a better start to the day than the one Saturday offered: a big dog-spotting walk around Bute Park with a Hard Lines coffee followed by a set of jangly power pop courtesy of Bramwell. It’s also really hard to imagine a better setting for the soft folk arrangements of Naima Bock (playing alongside caroline’s Oliver Hamilton). After racking up well over twenty thousand steps going from basement to basement the day before, any opportunity to take a literal pew would’ve been well received but Bock’s set really did feel special.

wing! suffered a little from the “we should see them really” mentality that had hindered Man/Woman/Chainsaw at the same venue the day before, no doubt in part due to them winning the prestigious Green Man Rising competition earlier this year. Thankfully, their all-encompassing trip hop soundscapes manage to drown out any disinterest for the most part. There’s so many different versions of what wing! could end up being, which makes them a fascinating act to catch and it helps that they’re already very good. ladylike, a band for whom Big Thief comparisons feel easy but fair enough, round out the first half of the day with a captivating set at Jacob’s basement.

It feels fitting that The Orchestra (For Now) should take to the stage at Clwb as the weather turns in the Welsh capital. The foreboding late stage Windmill group race their way through one of the most enthralling sets of the weekend, weaving playful melodies through sharp blasts of unfiltered fury. It feels as though it could all fall apart at any moment but it never does. Lime Garden follow directly and deliver another of the weekend’s highlights. They’re one of the more established acts on the bill at this point, having released and heavily toured their brilliant debut LP ‘One More Thing’ since their last appearance at Sŵn in 2022. Their experience shows as they balance the hits with plenty of really promising new songs.

Dog Race and Squid is one of few truly brutal clashes that the festival had, which is pretty impressive considering the depth of the line-up. Having seen the former in Manchester a couple of weeks ago, we opt to head to Tramshed for the first and last time of the weekend to see Squid close the festival. Earlier this year, the post-punk group released their most expensive and accomplished work to date in ‘Cowards’. Their genre-bending live set is befitting of that significant step forward and it’s testament to their energy that they manage to generate the most movement of any band across the weekend despite playing to the leggiest crowd.

The short walk home across the city centre feels like much more of an ask than it did before the first notes of Silver Gore’s set ushered in the weekend, but even in the weariness of it all talk turns to plans to come back next year. There’s something really special about Sŵn. If nothing else, it’s probably the only place in the world that you can drink a Jubel peach beer in a Grade I listed building whilst listening to Welsh psych pop. It is, of course, so much more than that. It’s one of the most comprehensive celebrations of new music in the world.